When I was training for a three-day walking event to benefit a breast cancer charity about six years ago, I ditched a huge drawer full of cheap, white cotton socks and invested in several pairs of spendy, structured athletic socks. Before that, I hadn’t considered myself an athlete and I certainly wasn’t doing rigorous enough exercise to warrant buying $15 socks. But when I realized that part of the reason my feet were badly blistered, aching, and sweaty was the stretched-thin cotton I was covering them, I was convinced it was time to switch over.

After one ten-mile walk in the expensive athletic socks, I went home and made sure all of the cheapy socks were gone for good. The good kind have held up well all these years later, and I still love the feeling of the cushioned heel and ball of my foot, the reliable arch support, the wicking fabric and meshy top that keep my feet cool, and that they never slip down when I really get going.

I considered myself a convert, specifically to Thorlo socks. At $13-$15 a pair, this is a commitment I am willing to make for the well-being of my feet and my workouts.

Then the other day, I was cruising through Walgreen’s for some first aid supplies, when I noticed that they now carry athletic socks among the knee-high hosiery and corn pads. They were on sale, and I wondered if Walgreen’s was stocking cheaper socks that would actually work well for walking. In my curiosity, I bought some.

I chose the most expensive kind I found on the rack — Kushyfoot Athletics. I chose them because they have padded soles and arch support and are made of organic cotton. They promised to massage my feet with every step. The package contained one pair of white, low-cut socks — for $3.49!

I have to say, they are very comfortable. Even though they barely peek up above my running shoes, they did not slip or leave my heel rubbed raw. I can’t say that I felt like my feet were getting a rub-down during my workout, but they were surprisingly more cushy to the many pairs of cheapy cotton socks I once owned.

I will still stay true to my Thorlos. Kushyfoot athletic socks are just not as structured and wicking as they are. But I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a few more packages of Kushyfoots as runner-up walking socks. That way, if one gets eaten by the washing machine monster or I accidentally leave them at a hotel, I won’t be as devastated. If have some kind of workout emergency and have to run in to a Walgreen’s, CVS, Publix, or Kroger (just some of the grocery and drug stores where they are sold, according to their website), I will be able to find inexpensive socks I’ve already road-tested. The best part? I won’t have to sacrifice wearing socks that feel good.

What kind of socks do you wear to work out in? Are you a sucker for the spendy athletic socks or do you stick with the cheap kind?

What do you wish you could do with those skin tags and warts you see? Do you wish you could find a simple way to get rid of them? Something that does not involve burning them off or cutting them off. Dermatend makes it easy to remove them easy and fast. It is an all natural cream that you apply to the problem areas. With just one easy application you will see your skin tags, warts disappear. No more costly doctors visits to remove them . No more needing to have them cut off, and being left with scar. It is embarrassing to have to deal with this problem. A lot of people have this problem and don’t even know that there is an at home treatment that you can use.

When it comes to mole removal, DermaTend is leading the industry. You have been searching for non surgical mole removal methods, and you just found the one that works.

Using only natural ingredients, a first review of DermaTend is that it is a safe, low-cost alternative to mole removal surgery. For permanent, natural mole removal, DermaTend is the only mole removal method with a 100% Risk Free, 60 Day Money Back Guarantee.

Why go through the pain of surgery, or get upset about the hundreds of dollars in doctor fees? You just want to remove a mole right?

Well now that can be done at home and for people on a tight budget. Five years ago you had no other choice, but today, right now you have a choice and that choice is DermaTend.

With thousands of satisfied customers world wide, DermaTend is becoming a household name. Don’t suffer any longer, welcome DermaTend into your home and let us prove to you, why we are the leading mole removal product.

Even if you just have one to five of them, or if you have 20 to 50 tags or warts that cover your body Dermatend will take care of those problem areas and leave your skin smooth and free of those blemishes.

There are a few options available.

TWO bottles of Extra Strength Dermatend Ultras ( will remove up to 30 tags and warts and results will be overnight.

OR

Extra Strength DermaTend Ultra ( Will remove up to 15 tags and warts and will remove them overnight)

OR

Original DermaTend Remover ( Will remove up to 4 tags and warts and will take about 3 days for results)

All options will come with a healing balm except the Original DermaTend Remover. That will ship with just that 1 tube. The healing balm will allow for faster healing times and also help with any scarring that might occur. Whats great about this product that its all natural. So you wont be applying something to your skin that has 20 different chemicals that could interact with your skin and irritate it.

The results will be fast and easy to achieve and will restore any lost self esteem that might have been lost. You deserve to have that flawless skin and to feel confident. The results will speak for themselves. Reclaim your old skin and get rid of all the skin tags and warts that are on your face or neck or body. Your results will come over night or within just a few days. Then the healing process will begin. Order now ! ! As you can Imagine with all of the media attention that this great product has been getting on just how fast supplies are selling out. So if you wanna ensure that you are able to get yours you will need to order today!

What I’m talking about here are cleans and snatches. You know, those exercises for increasing vertical jump that everyone says you need to be doing but no one will take the time to show you how the heck to do them properly.

Yes PROPERLY… This is a very important term, not only for Olympic Lifts but for all vertical jump training.

We are talking about…

Technique… Technique… Technique… It’s ALL about the “T” word.

A lot of coaches say Olympic lifts cause injuries and some claim that they are unnecessary to increase your vertical jump.

The TRUTH is actually the complete opposite! These lifts can help your vertical jump fly… and the only way you get injured is by poor technique.

Your technique has to be really good and you need to have plenty of practice before incorporating cleans and snatches into your vertical jump training.

Otherwise…

You won’t get much out of them. So let me help you get this technique down and you will love Olympic Lifts once you technically master them.

Start with a broomstick, then work your way up to a bar. You will begin to athletically adapt and your vertical gains will follow!

Still not convinced…

Statistically, all those who achieve a snatch weighted to their own body weight, nearly all have a 40 inch standing vertical!

How Freakin Crazy Is That!

Here are articles that give you sound technique on the two Olympic Lifts that will really give you an advantage on the basketball court and ultimately help train you how to jump higher for basketball! They are the Jump Snatch and the Hang Clean.

The first question I think you will ask is “What is VC-133 RAM?”. Well VC RAM stands for Virtual Channel RAM, it is built on the PC-100/133 architecture and is pin-to-pin compatible with SDRAM sockets. Virtual Channel RAM is supposed to improve the speed at which data is prepared for a read/write cycle. Since modules are so compatible, there is no need to change motherboards, and there is also no additional cost over PC-133 RAM. With so many things incommon with these two types of RAM (Random Access Memory) you’re probably wandering which is better. Well that is what we’re here to find out! I have gotten hold of an Apacer 128MB PC-133 RAM module and an Apacer 128MB VC-133 RAM module. I’ve tried to keep them as similar as possible so we can get the best results.

How Does It Work?

Virtual Channel Memory provides fast static registers between the memory core and the I/O pins of the module. This results in a reduction in the time it takes to get data from the modules to the CPU or Chipset.

Virtual Channel Memory is only supported by motherboards with the VIA chipset which is a bit of a downside, but with the rise in popularity of AMD Processors, alot of people already have a motherboard with the VIA chipset. Virtual Channel Memory uses about 30% less power than regular SDRAM because it increases the efficiency of the memory bus.

Each controller in your system (CPU, Video Card, PCI Cards, etc) wants it’s own set of memory all to itself. Virtual Channel Memory provides a Virtual Channel for each controller which eliminates the chance of data misses and interference caused by other controllers trying to access the memory at the same time.

Well now we know about Virtual Channel Memory and how it works, so why don’t we move onto the benchmarks!

I tested both of the RAM modules using SiSoft Sandra’s Memory Benchmark and 3DMark2000.

SiSoft Sandra 2000

Apacer 128MB VC-133 RAM
(Click for Larger Image)

Apacer 128MB PC-133 RAM
(Click for larger image)

In the SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark the VC-133 beats the PC-133 by a significant margine. Lets see if these scores will be replicated in 3DMark2000

3DMark2000

Apacer 128MB VC-133 RAM
(Click for Larger Image)

Apacer 128MB PC-133 RAM
(Click for Larger Image)

As you can see the change of RAM Modules had no impact on the 3DMark2000 Scores. Only 1 3DMark separating the two.

Positive

Faster than PC-133 Memory
Improved Average Access Latency
Same Price as PC-133 Memory
Uses Less Power than PC-133 Memory

Negative

Only supported by the VIA Chipset

Conclusion

I couldn’t really think of many bad points about this RAM. However, the one negative point is quite a big issue. If you need the extra performance but have a VIA chipset based motherboard then by all means, I recommend this RAM to everyone. If more motherboards supported this memory then it would have gotten about a 9.5/10 but because of this problem it only scores a score of 8.5/10. You can buy Virtual Channel RAM quite cheap at ComputerMarket.com.au

No matter how quick you are or how many strategies you have figured out, if you own a slow PC it’s impossible to be the best you can be in games. If you have an old PC, you don’t need to go and buy a whole new system because there are many other ways to improve your Home Gaming System. All you need to do is find out what upgrades are the most important to improve gaming performance. This guide is aimed at teaching you what upgrades these are and the best choices in each category. In most cases if you own an old PII processor you will not need to go out any buy a whole new processor since this isn’t really all important. The most important thing in a gaming system is the graphics card. The latest games require you to have a more than decent graphics card for them to run smoothly. Alot of other things make a difference in gaming performance such as RAM, Sound Card, Speakers, Joystick, Harddrive, mouse pad and even modem. Read on to find out what I have chosen for the Ultimate Home Gaming System.

Graphics Card
If your PC is quite old, chances are it doesn’t have an AGP slot. This doesn’t make a big worry since most graphics cards come in the AGP and PCI form. The graphics card I chose for this system is the AsusV7700 GeForce2 Ultra which costs around USD$499. Now this is extremely expensive for a video card but since this is the Ultimate Home Gaming System we chose to think of performance rather than price. With the GPU of this 64MB card running at 250mhz and the RAM running at 460mhz this should be plenty of speed to keep you satisfied. You may want to choose a different GeForce2 Ultra brand such as VisionTek or Creative Labs, always check on the vendors site for the latest drivers.

RAM
This is another important thing in a gaming system and is critical for running demanding games. For this system I chose a stick of Mushkin High Performance Rev.3 128MB PC-133 RAM which can be purchased for USD$130. I only chose 128MB of RAM because this is more than enough for games. Purchasing more would just be pointless.

Speakers
For a good gaming system you’ll need a 3D, four channel sound system. A good example of this is the Cambridge Soundworks FourPointSurround FPS2000 soundsystem. This can be purchased for around USD$150. This speaker system consists of a subwoofer, four identical satellite speakers, and a master volume control.

SoundCard
If you decide to go with four-channel sound, make sure you have a sound card like the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Value Digital which supports all four channels and positional 3D audio. This can be bought for just USD$55.

HardDrive
With many games taking from 400MB-1GB of space you’ll need a big harddrive if you want to store alot of games. For this system I chose the IBM Deskstar 75GXP 75GB ATA100 harddrive. This is more than enough space for anyone to have and comes in at about USD$420.

DSL/Cable Modem
With online gaming playing a big role in overall gaming it is good if you had a fast connection like cable or dsl. If you’re in Australia I would recommend getting Telstra cable. An excellent online game to play isCounter Strike, which is a modification of the rather old but excellent game HalfLife.

Mouse Pad
Would you like killer accuracy for those all important shots with the Railgun? Or are you just sick of those cheapo cloth mousepads and want to brighten up your system? In my opinion RatPadz are the ultimate mousing surface and can be purchased for just USD$13.

Joystick and Gamepad
When selecting a joystick or gamepad spend a little extra on a better quality product, the more you spend on a joystick, the better the experience. I would choose to get Microsoft’s Sidewinder Precision Pro Joystick and Sidewinder GamePad Pro. The joystick can be purchased for around USD$109 and the gamepad for about USD$35.

Conclusion
Well there you have it, my guide to upgrading your computer into the ultimate gaming system. You might be wandering why I didn’t include a case, cpu, motherboard etc. This is because this article isn’t about purchasing a full gaming system it is only a guide on how to upgrade your computer into the Ultimate Gaming System. You might not agree with some of the things I put in the aricle so feel free to add and subtract things you want and don’t want.

When AMD first started a while back, they just couldn’t keep up with Intel’s Pentium processor. They tried to catch up with their K5, K6 and K6-II but the Pentium still outperformed them. Then AMD released the Athlon, which was much cheaper than the Pentium III and it also outperformed it in most cases. The Athlon and the Pentium III were quite expensive at the time so Intel decided to concentrate on the people with less money and released the Celeron which then took over the low-end market. AMD realised this and a few weeks ago they released the Duron. The Duron is cheaper than the Celeron and outperforms it by FAR. It also doesn’t come too far behind the Athlon in performance wise.

Unlike the Athlon the Duron is only made in Socket style packaging because they are much cheaper than Slot style ones. The Duron is currently only available in 600, 650 and 700mhz (I got my hands on the 650mhz). The Athlon however comes in up to over 1ghz. The Duron is fabricated with 0.18 micron die process, this smaller die size allows for faster switching times and less power dissipation. This means that the Duron can be clocked alot higher. The Duron features about 25 million transistors. 21-22 million are devoted to logic and the L1 area, while the remaining 3-4 million compose the 64 KB L2 storage area.

Tech Specs

128 KB First Level Cache

64 KB Full-speed Second Level Cache

200 MHz (100 MHz DDR) EV6 Bus

100 mm2 die

25 million transistors

0.18 µm die process

462-pin Socket package

600, 650, 700 MHz clock.

Cache Structure

The Cache structure of the Duron is different to the other processors. It has 128kb of L1 cache (like the Athlon & Thunderbird) while the Celeron only has 32kb of L1 Cache. The thing that separates the Duron from the Athlon and the Thunderbird is that the Duron only has 64kb L2 Cache and the Thunderbird has 256kb. The Celeron has 128kb L2 Cache. The Duron and the Celeron have On-Die L2 cache and runs at full clock speed. Duron’s have a 64 Bit L2 bus while coppermine celerons have a 256bit bus. However the Duron’s Cache is exclusive which means with earlier processors like the celeron, the L1 cache was copied into the L2 cache. So the effective total cache for a celeron is 32 + 96 = 128kb. The effective cache for duron is 128 + 64 = 196kb. Why AMD chose to keep the 64 Bit bus only god knows.

Weird Stuff

For some reason some of the programs like SiSoft Sandra, Test CPU and even Windows 98 thinks that the processor is a Athlon but I am positive it is a Duron! It says it’s a Duron when it’s booting up, in WCPUID and of course on the chip, but I don’t know why these proggies think it’s an Athlon. Here are some screenshots to show you:

Weird hey? Well if you know what the problem is Email Me

Test Bed

Windows 98 SE

650mhz AMD Duron Processor

PC-133 128MB 168Pin SDIMM RAM W/Buffer (Apacer – Infineon 7.5)

Quantum LM 15GB Ultra DMA/66,7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, 2M Buffer

GeForce256 32MB

Soundblaster Live! Value

AOpen 52x IDE CD ROM Drive, bare drive

Acer 325 Network Card, 10/100 PCI Wake-on-Lan, Realtek 8139 chip

Benchmark Programs Used

The programs I used to benchmark the Duron are SiSoft Sandra, 3DMark2000 and Quake 3 Arena.

SiSoft Sandra

Here are the benchmark results from the CPU Benchmark in SiSoft Sandra

The Duron outperforms the competition in SiSoft. Look at the bottom of this picture, notice how it says that I have an Athlon instead of a Duron.

Quake 3 Arena

Here are the benchmark results for Quake 3 Arena. I tested it in screen resolutions 800×600, 960×720 and 1024×768

800×600

960×720

1024×768

Not too bad results. They probably would’ve been higher if I had a better graphics card. As you can see, the higher the resolution the lower the FPS.

3D Mark2000

Test Summary

The results were not too bad but not as good as they could have been. Again they could have been better if I had a better card like a GeForce 2 Ultra, but I guess you can’t have everything you want can you?? I didn’t include any overclocking information in this review because I haven’t overclocked the processor yet. When the processor is overclocked I will be sure to write an article on it

Positive

Cheaper than Celeron

Faster than Celeron

Uses Athlon Core

From what i’ve heard it’s highly overclockable

Lots of them have Unlocked Multipliers

Negative

Only a few motherboards support it at present

Conclusion

This is an excellent card for people on a budget and it doesn’t fall far behind the Athlon and Pentium 3. So next time your on the lookout for a new processor make sure you check out this one. We at AcidTech are pleased with it’s performance and recommend it to anyone!

Fitness on your mind, want to shed those ugly extra kilos? Well, we share similar thoughts as we are hell bent on helping people like you to transform from fat to fit. After all, who does not want to look good and be fit; it makes one confident about oneself which helps in changing the overall personality for better.

Introduction
Don’t you just hate Microsoft operating systems? They resemble a giant snowball in free fall gathering more snow until the final crash when this happens the system becomes inoperable and we are forced to reformat. Well fear no more at Acidhardware we have compiled this guide on optimizing and maintaining a good clean Windows 2000 machine. It’ll hold off the final BSOD just a tad longer and maybe even increase your uptime and system stability. Please note some of the programs here are also available for Win9x and WinME, as this guide was written on my personal experience with Windows 2000 I have more knowledge and experience with tweaking and maintaining it.

Defragmentation
I can’t stress to you enough the importance of this process. It not only increases performance but in some cases can also detect and correct any potential errors if used in conjunction with scanning, a quick scan and defrag can do wonders for your system. Defragmentation is basically the process of removing fragmented files and placing them onto another place in your hard drive to form one contiguous block of data. This allows for faster access(lower seek times) and greater STR(sustained transfer rates.) You may be asking this is all great in theory, but how do I regularly maintain this? Well AcidHardware has the answer. Although a very basic defragmentation tool is provided in Settings\Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Defragmenter it has no options for schedueling or for defragmenting the Paging File and the Registry. These are two integral parts to any Windows operating system, so these files should be carefully maintained.

The programs ideal for this task are O&O Defrag, Perfect Disk 2000 and Diskeeper. O&O Defrag is what I currently use. It provides boot time defragmentation of the system files and scheduling all in a very easy to use package it is also quite fast and efficient on system resources. It can also be set to intelligently defragment a drive when it has reached a threshold amount of fragmentation e.g. defragment only at 20% fragmentation. Perfect Disk 2000 is a disk defragmentation tool with all the bells and whistles it has boot time defragmentation, scheduling with the added option of only allowing fragmentation to run for a specified amount of time eg 3 hours. Combined with the added ability to scan network volumes. It also incorporates “SMART” data placement which seems to me when it defragments a drive places certain files at the end rather than the beginning. This is an unconventional approach to defragmentation and I cannot verify whether it is beneficial or not. Finally the last program. Diskeeper this defragmentation tool whilst being speedy and allowing multiple volumes to be defragmented at once leaves less than desirable results. It often takes more than one pass to fully defragment a drive which is annoying when you have only scheduled it to run once. It also sports scheduling and boot time defragmentation. O&O Defrag boasts a freeware version of its disk utility and for that reason it comes highly recommended.

The programs can be found at the following links:
O&O Software
Raxco Perfect Disk 2000
Executive Software, Diskeeper

Defragmentation is not as crucial if you are using the NTFS file system as it does not fragment as badly as FAT32. However for a home PC FAT32 is a more ideal choice as it gives better performance. Home users do not normally need the security of the NTFS file system or its 2 terabyte space allowance or its better disk compression. If you are using an NTFS hard drive fragmentation may not occur as frequently. One of the key advantages of the NTFS file system is that it is a recoverable file system because it keeps track of transactions against the file system. Thus allowing CHKDSK to find inconsistencies more easily. The MFT Master File Table which keeps track of these file transactions often gets fragmented and may need defragmentation. Read more about FAT32 vs NTFS here.

Keep that CPU Cool
This is a tip for Symmetric Multi Processor (SMP) Users. It turns out in Microsoft’s current kernel implementation for SMP they didn’t include a system idle process this process sends HLT commands to the CPU telling them to idle and conserve power thus generating less heat output. The program CPUIdle can be used to remedy this problem. There are other CPUIdlers available but in tests it has always shown that the original CPUIdle attains maximum efficiency. CPUIdle also has the option of being able to communicate with Motherboard Monitor allowing automated shutdown if the processor reaches a certain temperature. CPUIdle can be found here.

Conserve That Memory
They say an elephant never forgets. In today’s world of computing if your elephant had at least 512 megabytes of RAM maybe it would never forget. Programs these days take up more and more RAM for example ICQ 2000 utilizes 11 megabytes of ram. In its previous incarnation ICQ 98 it only utilized 4 megabytes of RAM. Especially with today’s current trend from some companies releasing half completed non optimized software especially with the Christmas crunch nearby. Enter Freemem Pro it automatically detects memory leaks, applications reserving more RAM than required and terminated applications that are still holding RAM. It actively monitors this and frees RAM as needed. It has the option of also freeing up RAM aggressively when there is only a small amount left. It does in systems with 64 megabytes or less. Find it here.A freeware program that achieves the same effect minus the bells and whistles can also be found here. It is called MemInfo II 0.90 and works well with 9x/NT.

Manage That Cache
Disk caching that is handled by Windows is often inefficient and slow. It is the cause of speed loss as the OS has to continually repost data due to error. This can be remedied by using such programs as O&O Clevercache. It seems to increase the responsiveness of my hard drives by about 20%. I have also heard that on computers with 64 megabytes of RAM or less it can increase performance by up to 50% find the program here.

Tweak that Memory
On my daily travels through the Internet i stumbled across this nifty little Japanese application that increases memory bandwidth 15% on BX chipsets. It’s truly a little gem and at $10US to register it won’t cost you the earth. Find the program here. Read a discussion at bp6.com about it here.

What to do if it all goes wrong
Have you ever experienced an explorer crash? Most Windows users have and when they see this they just reboot. Well now you don’t have to. Please welcome Traysaver. This program caches all your systray icons so in the event of an explorer crash it reposts all the icons. You may ask why would I bother if Windows 2000 already does this. Well the simple fact is it doesn’t do this well icons like ICQ etc are lost and if traysaver isn’t used then a reboot is in order.

Clean It Up
I may sound like a nagging old aunt but, if you want your system running at its best you’ll need to regularly clean out the recycle bin, internet cache, stray registry entries and orphaned DLLs and other files. A great program called Easycleaner can be found here. Another great program is Norton Cleansweep again it has all the bells and whistles although you may not need half of them find it here.

Keep Up To Speed
Make sure you always have the latest updates for your Windows installation. Find them here:
Corporate Windows Update
Windowsupdate
Microsoft Technet

Corporate Windows Update is only recommended for experienced users it has the latest Hotfixes but they are not always easy to install.

Links, Sites of Interest and Closing Thoughts
I have achieved a Windows uptime of over two weeks using the above mentioned methods. I encounter few problems with memory and little slow down due to a very clean memory system, registry and system directory with only the essentials. I also use the GeoShell desktop replacement GeoShell.com it is fast lean and efficient. With the combination of these methods any user should be able to keep their system running well and nicely. The most essential part of maintenance is that you keep it up constantly, as your computer is constantly. Use the scheduling options and don’t neglect that defragment or other vital system process. Some sites I have found to be invaluable in writing this article:
NT Compatible – A wealth of information on Windows 2000 and NT4
Tweakfiles – a great site for tools to tweak your system constantly updated
Shellcity – constantly keeps track of new and exciting programs include desktop shell replacements and tweaking programs.
Windows 2000 Performance Optimization Guide – This site needs no introduction

Sites to learn about shell (GUI replacement) some of these shells provide really easy to use and speedy interfaces:
Floach – general shell replacement site
Geoshell – my shell replacement of choice
Litestep – one of the most popular shell replacements around
Stardock – home of windows blinds

I hope you have enjoyed the guide as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I hope it is useful and provides some insight for you into Windows maintenance and performance enhancement. I hope you will join me again soon for my articles. Thank you for reading.

Today, lots of people have more than one computer in their household because with newer and newer systems being released each month, people tend to upgrade alot more often than they used to, but then they don’t know what to do with their spare old computer. A good idea would be to network the computers, now the next problem comes into play, you’d get pretty bored if you had a computer without the internet right? I know I would. Most people can’t afford to get two internet accounts so they would rather share the internet with their other computer. Don’t know how? Then read on! Since most users are dialup users I will be focusing on sharing the internet with the normal dialup connection rather than cable or adsl sharing.

Please explain?

You can’t share the internet with another computer if their not both connected in a network. You have to choose one of the computers to be a “host” and the other computers to be “clients”. The host computer will be connected to the internet and the client or clients will use the host’s connection. Sounds great right? 2 internets for the price of one? Wrong. It does slow your connection down depending on what the person on the other computer is doing. If the other person is just viewing a webpage it won’t affect the others much. However, if the one of you is downloading a file it will noticeably slow the others down a bit.

How do I do it?

You can share internet using software such as Wingate or InternetGate but I find it the best with Windows 98 SE so I will be explaining how to share the internet with Windows 98 SE. It is extremely simple to share the internet with Windows 98 SE. All you have to do is go into Internet Explorer, Go to the Tools menu in the top left hand area, select internet options, click on the Connections tab up the top and then click Setup. From there an Internet Connection Sharing Wizard should come up. Select “I want to set up my Internet connection manually, or I want to connect through a local area network (LAN)”, click next and it should take you the rest of the way from there. Now how simple was that? You can have as many computers sharing the internet as you want you just repeat the process with the other computers.

Conclusion

Internet Connection Sharing is an excellent idea because it saves you money by saving you from getting another internet account. The only thing bad I have found while sharing the internet is it does get a bit slow sometimes. If you really need high speeds my answer to you is to upgrade your host computer to cable. With cable internet connection sharing you have to have 2 network cards in your host computer, one to connect to the hub and the other to connect to the cable modem. Since this is a internet connection sharing guide for Windows 98 SE I will not go into Cable modems. Look out for an “Internet Connection Sharing Guide for Cable” soon!

Disclaimer: – Before I begin I would just like to let you know that if you decide to overclock and you fry your CPU it’s at your own risk.

Introduction

Overclocking is basically pushing your CPU or Video Card faster than it was meant to go. Some people even sped up their chip to double the speed they bought it at! In this artical I will be mainly concentrating on overclocking your processor (CPU) rather than your video card.

How is the speed determined??

There are two things used to work out the speed of a processor. FSB (Front Side Bus) is the speed of the memory, and the Multiplier. The FSB and Multiplier are multiplied to find the speed of the processor e.g: A multiplier of 4.5 and an FSB of 100Mhz would give you a 450Mhz Processor.

So how do i do it??

There are a few ways to overclock your Processor, you can either change the FSB with a program such as SoftFSB or you can change the FSB from your BIOS. If you want to change the FSB using the program you have to know exactly what type of Motherboard you have and you have to know your memory type and FSB. Also make sure that you have a clockchip on your motherboard. Most newer processors have a multiplier lock. If you don’t know how to change your multiplier, have a look in your motherboards manual. You might also need to change the voltage to successfully overclock. When changing your FSB, don’t put it up too much at a time, do it little by little so you don’t burn out your chip. You’ll know how far you can go to when you can’t boot up or your computer resets after playing 15mins of Quake 3. If this happens, just clock it down a bit.

I have done a basic overclock just to give you an idea how it’s done. Here are pictures of my WCPUID Status before and after the overclock.

Notice the change in the External speed (thats the FSB). I could only get it stable at to 112Mhz FSB because I didn’t have any extra cooling.

Cooling

This is the main problem overclockers face. When you speed up your processor it generates more heat. So if you get more fans and heatsinks it’ll enable you to get a much better overclock. You can buy several fans at www.auspcmarket.com.au. You can also cool your processor with Water cooling or Peltier Cooling. Water cooling is a water block attached to your CPU, water picks up the heat from the CPU, gets pumped into a radiator. Peltier Cooling can be combined with the other coolers. It works by transfering heat from one side of the peltier to another. leaving the CPU on the cold side. The heat then can be moved from the hot with a Heatsink/Fan or a Peltier. The higher your processor speed is, the more heat it produces.

Conclusion

Overclocking is a good idea if you know what your doing. However, when you overclock you void your warranty and your CPU won’t last as long. So if your on a budget and can’t afford the newest processor out, overclocking is a great idea. Remember! Don’t fry your CPU!